


Oaks From Acorns

by adrift_me



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Dragon!Thorin, Fluff, M/M, Reunions, Romance, Warm and Fuzzy Feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 11:11:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adrift_me/pseuds/adrift_me
Summary: Some lay in nameless graves, others slumber in tombs, their names set in stone. The stone beneath a few centuries worth of world cracks, dusts and opens in the middle with a heavy sigh of life within it. And a someone, perhaps yet a no one, steps out of his ancient tomb, two halves of a gleamless stone held in hands and a sword sheathed on his side.Thorin Oakenshield awakes to a new body, to a new life and to an old affection that never quite fades. If anything, it grows stronger, like a little acorn into the king of all trees, an oak.





	Oaks From Acorns

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Thank you very much for taking the time to read my fic, I hope you enjoy it!
> 
> This idea went through a lot of changes, but I quite like the state it is in now. However, I think I'd like to expand more on the idea of Thorin having dragon blood, because I have **headcanons** now. If you think you might like to read an adventure about this post-fic, let me know? :)
> 
>  
> 
> [Come chat with me on tumblr :)](http://accio-toffy.tumblr.com)

Great oaks from little acorns grow, sprouting green younglings into the soil first and dropping acorns again into it to be reborn. There is a cycle to the whole of the world, to civilizations, to great beasts like drakes and to single people.

Some lay in nameless graves, others slumber in tombs, their names set in stone. The stone beneath a few centuries worth of world cracks, dusts and opens in the middle with a heavy sigh of life within it. And a someone, perhaps yet a no one, steps out of his ancient tomb, two halves of a gleamless stone held in hands and a sword sheathed on his side.

He looks up at the arch over the entrance to his tomb and reads the language he still remembers. Thorin Oakenshield, it says. And with his name, he remembers. But something else roars in his blood, something familiar, something that wishes him to be bigger than the world. A hunger, a thirst, and a need.

Thorin Oakenshield lays the remnants of a no longer shining Arkenstone back in its tomb and travels further down the half sunken tunnel to where the light might be. He touches the cold stone pillars, inlaying the tunnel, and slowly remembers.

“Why am I awake,” he asks softly of no one, walking on and on until he reaches a split tunnel and remembers to turn left. Soon the deepest of it lightens up and Thorin knows he will soon reach the exit. There ahead he hears the caw-caw of crows and the sweeps of their mighty wings. He hears winds blowing and whistling through the tunnel, singing long forgotten songs. He sees sunlit bursts through the cracked stone and winces at how bright it is.

And as he steps out, it is in the valley of the Misty Mountains, standing tall, peak after peak of it buried in foggy whites, grays and purples like an elder’s beard. Thorin watches a moment, getting the feeling of his home. It all feels so familiar, yet looks so wrong. He wonders how many years have passed but has no knowledge of time or date, and the newness of the world makes his head dizzy.

He searches the pockets of his coat, of his armor and shirt. The chainmail is intact, sturdy and heavy on his shoulders. The furs of his coat are soft and only a little disheveled, dusted with time and stone crumble from the tunnel. And there is something in his pocket. He pulls it out and looks at it against the sky, its smooth outlines that of an acorn.

“Bilbo.”

He remembers the name. He remembers the man. He remembers the tears that fell on his face as Bilbo Baggins mourned his departure from the world of the living. It is a wrong Thorin wishes to right, because there should not be a day that hobbit feels disappointed or grieved by Thorin’s death.

If the hobbit is still alive, the King under the Mountain wishes to pay him a visit.

Something appears up in the sky, but a dot, slowly unfolding into something larger, something with wings and roar, and as it flies down, Thorin sees the terror itself, a young black dragon with fire burning in its throat. And then another - right from the side of the mountain, just as large, pale, magnificent, bursting flames into the sky and booming laughter at it.

But what is surprising the most is that there is another dragon. He does not quite know it yet, only feels the fire flowing in his veins, wishing to join the roar and free flight. His chest bursts from the unspoken desire, from the need, and his body morphs and changes and soon in place of the King under the Mountain births a dragon.

Thorin, watching the world through the slits of lazy eyes, realises he has become that which he hates most. He claws and cries and leaves deep scratches in the stone, scarring it forever. He crushes stones and breaks pines, until he can’t anymore. And he takes off into the wind, towards the other two dragons, who welcome him almost playfully. And together, wing beside wing, they travel forth with the winds and spirits, to explore their domain and resettle atop the Misty Mountains.

A week passes, and Thorin watches the people of Laketown establish watch. Another two pass and there is a scouting party from Erebor, stealthing through the narrow paths. Their eyes are accustomed to the dark, staring into the shadows. Thorin and the other two are well aware of that, and thus they hide up on the snowy sides, where no keen eye should reach them. The people of Erebor are not ready. Perhaps, they never will be.

A month more passes, and Thorin parts from the other two dragons. But when they part, it is men that stand before him, his nephews Fili and Kili, sharing the blood of Durin, the blood of dragons. For their farewells they speak little, but give each other a promise to reunite when the time is right. It hurts to leave, and the wounds in Thorin’s body have not healed enough, but he knows he must seek that which calls to his heart louder than a need. It is a longing. A human emotion, and he holds onto it, climbing down the mountain, watching two dragons take off and meld with the skies.

Some folks of Laketown would speak for a long while how they saw a dragon crash against the sharp rocky edges of the mountain wall until it disappeared never to be seen again.

Thorin finds refuge in a cave for a few fortnights, feeding off wild goats and roots, nursing his wounds back to health. A dragon’s golden veins and fire in his blood may be making him stronger, but they have no healing power, neither to his body nor to his soul. He sleeps by a burning fire and awakes to it still in roar, burnt from his new magic.

Sometimes he plays with the gleaming flames of fire. He touches them, runs his fingers through it, makes it sparkle and dance. The flames lick his fingers but painlessly so, like silk, like water in the running river, like smoke from a pipe. He is not afraid of fire, but it is its violent and untamed nature that scares him more. At least it is good for his pipe and weed and for watching flames shape into pictures and dreams and terrors that haunt his sleep.

Soon the mountains change into hills and hills into prairies, blanketed with spiky clusters of grass and rare field flowers. Thorin walks to feel the sturdiness of the ground. To fly as a dragon across these lands would put him in grave danger, even if he could breathe fire against anyone to come in his path. Instead, he buys a pony off his honest work in one of the villages and thus hurries away through the prairies, sometimes alongside a spooked horse herd, other times alone, enjoying the freedom.

An acorn in his chest warms his heart.

Oh Bilbo, he thinks. Does the hobbit remember him still? Does he think of him in the days of sadness or in days of joy? Is there place for forgiveness in the hobbit’s heart, is there right for Thorin to have deserved that forgiveness? He berates himself often, reminded of the sickness every day, of his own madness to which he is now bound if not by mind, then by body.

The prairies end and begin with forests. Thick and dark, overrun with darkness so terrible that even the brightest of sun rays cannot break through. But creatures of shadows lay down to Thorin’s sword and trees make way as he charges across the untrodden paths as he breathes smoke and fire from his nostrils like the beast he was born to be.

When he reaches the very end of the forest, his heart takes a little hitch and his feet freeze just where the soft fluffy grass grows in the soil. He takes a careful step and smiles, remembering how it felt last time he visited the Shire. How the ground seemed softer after the hard stone. How the air itself smelled of spices and flowers and something unfamiliar, but very much like Bilbo.

Thorin steps on and on, seeing the village way ahead, perhaps, a day’s worth of walk. Not so much for a dragonborn, not nearly so much for someone as determined and needy and longing. His heart beats faster, and the acorn in his pocket feels heavier.

How many months has he traveled, how many sunsets and dusks has he met? He drank the morning dew and counted stars, he breathed smoke in and out, one of his pipe, the other from his nose and mouth. He endured loneliness and solitude, and only now does it occur to him that, perhaps, his visit might not be as welcome. Has he created a whole fantasy in his mind, mimicking conversations with Bilbo in his head?

In the field of wheat he runs and across the lawns he sprints, but then walks slowly again, erratic, unsure, questioning. But his feet drag him further and further until he sees Bag End, its round green door just two hills away.

There. By the door he sees a figure, one which he would recognize in sleep and wake alike.

Thorin is born of hard dragon skin and of stone walls of his home and tomb, but his heart and soul are so far from the texture of it. It is softer, more like a hobbit’s curly hair or the flannel of his shirt or the mellow sound of his voice. He longs to hear it. He needs to feel it.

He stands before the fence gate, eyes clear and bright as he looks at Bilbo Baggins, whose pipe has gone out and the smoke has floated away in choked out rings.

“Thorin?” he asks, looking around as if it could be a ruse, as if his eyes are lying, as if grief has blinded him. He walks down the stairs carefully to the gate, and Thorin stays where he is, too scared to become the ghost Bilbo acknowledges him for. Between them is but a fence and a bush of blossoming flowers.

“You cannot be,” Bilbo whispers, his voice breaking in a way that could shatter Thorin’s heart. But it doesn’t. He reaches out to place his hand on top of Bilbo’s where it rests upon the fence gate. Bilbo looks at their hands, and Thorin feels the warmth.

“It is me.”

“You cannot be,” the hobbit repeats, and Thorin laughs a little.

“Please, Master Baggins. It is me…” he swallows dryly, smiling. His face hurts when he does, as if he forgot how to, as if a smile is so unfamiliar now that his muscles have to relearn it. “There is much I must tell you. And I wish to hear of your life, too. Will you have me, Bilbo Baggins?”

He watches Bilbo’s eyes gleam with tears, like teardrops falling off the flowers after rain. And to solidify his request, he reaches over the fence and opens his palm with an acorn in it, warm and smooth and familiar. The hobbit’s eyes focus on it and shivering hands reach for it.

“Oaken acorn…” he mutters. “The spring of the king of all trees has brought a king to me. Living or dead…”

“Living.”

Bilbo smiles, scrunches his nose a little in a manner that is so endearing to Thorin. The fence still separates them as do months of grief and yearning. The dragonblood in Thorin’s veins boils and bursts to protect the treasure he has long discovered, more precious than all of the gold of Erebor.

And that treasure pulls out a pocket watch.

“Ah! Teatime!” he exclaims. “Just on time, Thorin Oakenshield. Tea is always at 4.”

“But it is not 4 yet,” he says, only to be met with a stern gaze of the hobbit and a finger pushing the watch clock hands to show 4PM.

“Come in, Thorin.”

“Bilbo.”

The king under the mountain fears going up the stairs and seeing the dwarven rune on a small wooden door or feeling the smell of a home he visited only once. What he is not afraid of is to reach to the hobbit’s shoulder, to hold it warmly. To lean over and a little away from the intruding flower of a blossoming bush. To press lips and capture soft mouth of the hobbit, soaking in the afternoon warmth of the sun and tasting tears of his love.

The gate creaks open as Thorin pushes at it, stepping into the small yard, kissing the hobbit a little longer than manners should allow, too short to the king’s taste.

There will be many stories to tell, plenty of tea to drink. There will be adventures and there will be myths of the dwarven king, reborn with the dragon soul. There will be much ahead, but that Bilbo Baggins will have to write at a later date in his leatherbound book, in the hole in the ground, above which, it is said, a dragon occasionally sleeps. Protecting its treasure, they say.


End file.
